SAF Medical Department Does Not Care About The Health Of Soldiers

...or that they simply suck. Either way they CMI (cannot make it) when it comes to treatment of illnesses much less to say ensuring the well-being of the soldiers.

Why am I saying something so absurd (in the sense that I'm saying something that will get me into trouble with the Singaporean government, not that certain organization sux. That, is already a well-known truth)?

I went to MMI (Military Medical Institute) today for an appointment regarding my tinnitus. Long waiting times... expected (but don't tell me to come earlier than the previous timing when it's gonna end up later anyway). Before seeing the doctor, went to the audio tech to have my ears cleaned of wax (and aggravating the problems in my left ear in the process, I don't exactly blame you but can the system please stop doing things that do more harm rather than solve problems, both medical and non-medical e.g. admin, repair). Friendly and nice guy.

Then, two hours after the new appointment timing, entered the room to see the doctor. The MO (Medical Officer), as I also managed to peek for previous patients, could only sit down while some guy from DSO (Defense Science Organization) did all the talking. He look look see see and say my ear is fine. Yes of course it's fine just by looking, since the injury occured a month ago and the bruise is already gone. He asked if I got tinnitus. I answered yes (else why would I be there in the first place?). Then he showed me the charts saying that I got very young (note the "very") degradation. So why did you say my ear is fine then? And a few things... pointless so I'm not bothered to type out. In the end, the verdict is, nothing. And just tellling me to protect my ears and get another earplugs. FUCK!? You're just gonna let this matter rest like that? I got the SAF earplugs from e-mart, they didn't work even when the MO put it in for me (of course they would think i didn't install correctly, in which case i wouldn't have made such a fuss wouldn't it?). I got my ears damaged, and all you guys are going to do is NOTHING!? He (the DSO guy) still have the cheek to tell me in the face that I won't be getting excused firearms. Do I look like I care about a small little excused firearms? I finished 24km with strained joints and already passed IPPT with a strained groin, you guys tell me am I a chao-genger? Even for a genger, PES C people still have to do guard duty and stuff, so I don't think they'd care either. I just want my ears treated goddammit.

Anf the best part, is when he told me that I'm discharged and when I asked him if anything could be done, he just said protect my ears and nothing could be done to make it better. This is total bullshit. A quick search on the internet reveals:

The most "effective" and famous: Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT)
Drugs and supplements (including the famous? T-Gone)
Electrical Stimulation (Cochlear implant)
Biofeedback
Cognitive Therapy
TMJ (temporomandibular joint) treatment
Low-pitched sound treatment
White noise masking
Music therapy
Compensation for lost frequencies by use of a hearing aid
And lastly, and possibly the only one with "real" curing effects, Photobiomodulation (a.k.a. Low Level Laser Therapy)

A web surfer gathers so much information, and you tell me there's nothing to be done? Fuck you. Even the doctor of the clinic below my house know that Vitamin B2 helps (by keeping the nerves healthy and reducing stress) and prescribed me some tablets. And you work in DSO. Seriously, I fear for the future of Singapore when it comes to defense. (not that people actually believe in ourselves. And our own designed weaponry just gonna make us less confident)

And to add, the whole talk session lasted no longer than two minutes.

If the tinnitus isn't of a level I can cope with (I have very high tolerance levels)(I know some tinnitus can be so loud that daily talk is affected), or if I get to know that my tinnitus is of too loud levels, I'm gonna sue you until your ass opens. Right now.

Otherwise, I've already made up my mind, that I'm going to become successful, whether in the music/entertainment industry or in business, get onto the TV, and tell everything to the whole world. I'll make sure that the SAF has no more face to lose (not that they have much left anyway). And by that time I'll be rich enough, so I'll be doing TRT with music therapy for 50% (my audiophile ears were trained by music in the first place), Low Level Laser Therapy for the next 50%.

I'm not afraid of posting this even though I know obviously that the government will do something to me when they see anything related to the army on blogs. I'm only saying the truth. My anger has greatly surpassed the cowardness that my friends know I am. If this post gets involuntarily taken down without me getting a satisfactory answer (i'll post if i do ever get one), you guys know what happened.

Not All Memory Sticks Are Created Equal: OEM Sticks

Summary: The graphs are the only thing everyone (including me) would care anyway...

Stick 1 (my first stick):


Stick 2 (my second stick):


Stick 3 (my fren's stick):


I happen to get my hands on 3 different OEM Sony Memory Sticks. Two of them are mine, bought at different times (one with the PSP and one when I decided that 4GB isn't enough and it was cheap at $45... became $50 though after a long story...), the other one I ordered it for a friend.

Knowing that the performance of sticks can be different (as shown by varying performance between Sony Original, Sandisk, Lexar, and OEM memory sticks), even between OEM sticks, I decided to try out this third card and compare it against the two that I have (and have already did the PSXReality scan).

My sticks are formatted FAT16, the new one is "RAW", probably PSP format (although it should've shown PSP in other cases). I understand that many people claim, and some have evidence, that PSP reads FAT16 sticks faster than FAT32 sticks, but that speed difference is due to the different cluster size, FAT16 has obviously bigger ones, and that results in higher speeds as according to the PSXReality graphs. It's also proven that FAT16, FAT32, and PSP formats yield the same PSXReality graphs, so file system is not an issue here.

The third stick... is both slower in read than my better reading card and slower in write than my better writing card.

Boy am I just lucky? In fact, the reading card I have has reading speeds comparable to Original Sony, while the writing card I have has writing speeds comparable to the Sandisk.

Lol

References:
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=48678&page=3
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=48678&page=4
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=48678&page=2

P.S. Note to W** L***: No I didn't take your stick and gave you a lousier one of mine. As you can see your stick is PSP-formatted as the way I've gotten it from the seller. Plus, your stick has the marking that proves it's from that seller.

:)

Two Weeks Of Hell

No I didn't abandon this blog. Not yet. The reason why you didn't see any update for the past two weeks is because I have been very very busy in camp, preparing for something that's almost futile. Going home at eleven plus every day, including weekends, and when not being able to catch the last bus home resulted in staying in, just makes me too tired to even watch Anime, let alone write blog entries.

Won't talk too much about it, now now, this is army stuff, controlled stuff isn't it?

But seriously, army is taking its toll on my body and life. Not mentioning semi-permanent joint injuries, I'm now suffering from Tinnitus. Yes, it's the incurable ringing-in-the-ear ear injury. All because my ear hole is too widely shaped to fit the new earplugs properly, imagine shooting rifles with near-zero ear protection. That's about something one would expect to get.

For a person that can hear computer hardware noises of 18dbA(real, not those lame Cooling products claims) and below, one that's trained in music and can distingush between 192 and 320kbps MP3, this is devastating I tell you. Never for a moment am I going to get the kind of silence required while watching movies again. Yes, that includes in cinemas. It's that loud.

I just don't know what's going to happen from now on. I'm just going to bear this grudge. And I'll get my revenge someday. I've worked hard injuring body parts for this army, and what have they given back? Cosmetic scarring is okay, movement disabilities and pain, acceptable... but YOU DON'T FUKKING SCREW WITH MY FIVE SENSES!!!!!!!!! Okay, "Don't talk about what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country". Okay, I've done so much for the country, but what has the country done for me in return? I bet I can get much better returns working for the real world out there. And those fukking chao-gengers, they end up more fit than us but cry like wussies at every small pain. Have you ever felt that it's more painful to prowl than to stand sentry? You know what's the difference between pain and unable to move? Have you ever had injuries from compensating for other injuries? If you haven't, then you should freaking shuddup about injuries. Cos frankly, you're still fine. You're just a pussy unable to take any pain.

Wah lan eh~

Price of everything is going up like mad. But price of computer and IT stuff are going down like mad.

Now 500GB HDD is only $170. A few months ago it was still >$200. Now it has the best price/GB ratio, same as a 2nd-hand 250GB/320GB HDD. Kinda pissed that I just bought a 2nd-hand 320GB for $100, at the same price/GB.

What's more, ram prices are so darn low, 1GB DDR2-800 less than $40, DDR2-667 less than $30 also got. And even DDR prices are lower than the past, $40+ for 512MB or $80+ for 1GB.

Even flash memory prices are so darn low. 4GB for $45, 8GB for $80+? Gimme a break.

Heck, cheapest E2140 + mainboard combo is only ~$195. And comes with GF7 on-board gfx. (My A64 single-core is worth sh!t now)

Basically if you bought anything even within this year, their value has fallen sharply.

Moral of story: Don't buy anything if you're not gonna make full use of it. I knew that long ago already, but still...

Kinda pissing that my Coolviva and ZM80C-HP were sitting down doing nothing, and now much more impressive coolers are now selling for the same price I bought them at.

The only good things that didn't lose too much value, are my Seasonic, Ninja, Samsung 19", and my current speakers. My PSP lost 2/3 of its value, or $100, right from the start. OMGWTFBBQ.

AVISynthesizer - making .avs scripts that allow your programs to accept whatever file format, in a jiffy

Summary:

Not much to summarize this time. Just download AVISynth and AVISynthesizer and follow the guide.

Whenever people ask for help on converting from a not-so-friendly format like WMV, MKV, RM to AVI/MP4, there's usually 2 answers:

1) Convert it to some other format like AVI first with another converter that can read (insert format here), at the great cost of twice the encoding (or half the speed) and reduced video quality).

or

2) The more experienced will suggest making AVISynth scripts, or .avs script/files, that will allow any program to read that file.

Actually the solution is called frameserving, and AVISynth is a frameserver. There are other frameservers out there e.g. VirtualDub, but (aside from VirtualDub that has easier-access to tools functions) AVISynth is by far the best. Best speed, lots of tweaking, best compatibility, and easiest to make, plus the invisible way of working.

Now why do I say it's easiest to make, when by default you have to write the .avs script yourself (and hence making it hell for non-programmers)?

Enter AVISynthesizer.

This program, when installed, creates something under the menu "send-to" when you right click on a file. The gif file below will show how it works:


Click to view it bigger.

The first frame shows what happens when you right-click and send to. Click AVISynthesizer.

The second frame shows what you should select. When freshly installed you only have the bottom 3 options, you can add others yourself later on (which is why this program is very versatile).

The third frame shows the .avs file created under the same directory, and its contents.

The forth frame means "simply drag the file into your encoder and it will work", if you haven't realized that already.

Pretty neat isn't it? Instead of finding another (most likely crappy) program that might work with the file format (through 2-step transcoding or have limited output formats/functions), this allows much more programs to read the file. And done in less than ten seconds.

Part two: one step further

Basically this thing works with templates and creates .avs scripts based on the templates. So we can use different templates to create .avs files that does the changes we want, all in just a few clicks. After setting up that is.

Go to C:\Program Files\ASynther\template (if you installed in the default directory)

Find simple-directshow.avst

Open with Notepad, and you see

#ASYNTHER Simple DirectShow reader
[DirectShowSource("%f")]

(You might see it in just one line instead of two, but it became two when I cut-and-pasted. Also, the generated .avs files have two lines, so I think there's some kind of character in that space that means "enter""line break" or something that my computer can't show. When making your own template it's better to have seperate lines too.)

Now you have the basic template, you can do whatever you like with it from here on. Remember to save as a different .avst file!

Oh the "Simple DirectShow reader" after the #ASYNTHER is the name that will show in the menu. Type anything you want so you can identify your own template later on.

And also, the templates are listed by FILE NAME (not menu name), so if you want a template to be first have 1 in front of the file name etc.

1. Resizing

I know some (kok) encoders do not have built-in resize function. Anyway AVISynth's Lanczosresize works better than the usual bilinear resize so it's better to use it nonetheless.

Add this line below:

Lanczosresize(480,272)

This is for PSP. Replace 480 and 272 with the respective x and y values of the resolution you want.

2. Frame rate conversion

Already covered in a previous article, but the short answer:

Add ", fps=23.976, convertfps=true" after the file name and before the close bracket, without the inverted commas.

Replace 23.976 with the frame rate you desire.

3. Padding, warpsharp, etc

There are a lot more things you can do with AVISynth, just experiment!